Broke Again
Playing poker for a living can be a very unstable profession. Unexpected things happen all the time that can cut into your playing bankroll, leaving you shorter than you'd like - anything from an untimely losing streak to car repairs.

Daniel - Poker Journal

I think Iíve fallen in Love Again

12 Sep 2007

Itís been a strange love affair Iíve had with poker. As a teenager I was addicted to her and never wanted to quit a game. It was a deep uncontrollable passion. My mind always racing with poker questions and soaking up every bit of information I could.

As I got older, wiser, better, I went through faces where poker wasnít all that fun anymore, despite the fact that I was very successful at it. Well, I can honestly say that Iím having fun playing poker right now and testing myself in this tournament as well as online at PokerStars in the 100-200 NL cash games. Iíve had a pretty good week, booking my first loss just about 20 minutes ago. Aside from that, I finished my day top 10 in chips and will be resuming day two of the WSOPE in great shape and fully expect to make a run at it.

My table tomorrow is relatively tough, with Lee Nelson, Howard Lederer, and Dario Aoliti, winner of the pot limit Omaha bracelet. If you want to watch the action tomorrow you can by going to www.worldseriesofpoker.com. Iíll be at the TV table and they are showing it live on the internet at 2:00pm local time.

So far in the tournament Iíve played ďmy wayĒ the whole way and am not going to veer from that at all. My way of playing tournament poker is a winning way. I have total faith in my system and as log as I stick with my game plan Iím going to be a force in this tournament and all of the upcoming tournaments to end the year. Playing better poker now than I ever have. Iíve made a few subtle modifications to my game, mostly for online play, and think that Iím reading hands as well as ever right now. Confidence is good.

I won a hand on day one that was pretty unlikely. I raised with 33 to 250 and got a caller behind me as well as the big blind. The final board read Q-10-8 9 A. It was checked to the river, the question is, how much would you be willing to pay to BUY my hand! The 33 were good, beating K-2 off suit and who knows what, lol.

I enjoyed the company on day one, playing alongside Ben Roberts and Alan Goering. I like both of those guys. The strangest thing happened all day long, though, as since my brain is a veritable poker information leak, I think I total Ben Roberts about everything I know about tournament pokerÖ and he was sitting on my left! He seemed genuinely interested (obviously), but not because he wanted to exploit me, more so to improve his own tournament game. Ben is a very successful cash game player that hasnít had a great deal of success in tournaments. I think I know why too. He leans towards conservative play and being as good of a player as he is, itís a crime that he doesnít open up more and play more flops with inferior players.

I canít wait until morning! I wanna play so bad. Having said that, to release some nervous energy, tonight I headed over to a place called Urban Golf which is about a 10 minute walk from here. They have the golf simulator there so I practiced for a while before playing the front nine at Pebble Beach. The clubs I used seem pretty good, at least the irons did. I was using Ping irons with a graphite shaft and if that machine is as accurate as it seems, I need to switch to a better set of irons. I hit the ball an average of 15-20 yards farther than I do with my own clubs! Amazing what a difference clubs can make?

On my way home I stopped into the casino to checkout the action. EDOG and Marco were doing good at their table and Jennifer and Gus seemed to be doing very well at the TV table. While there, I ran into one of the young internet superstars, BoostedJ who was sweating his buddy Durrr at the TV table. BoostedJ and I had a good 15 minute conversation about all things poker, mainly online poker, etc.

Speaking of online poker, you will be happy to know that PokerStars added a new high limit table called DEEP which has an increased minimum buy in. Apparently, there was been an epidemic, if you will, of short stack professionals who buy in for the minimum and essentially ruin the flow of the game since they force the rest of the players to play more conservatively. The minimum buy in at a $100-$200 NL game has always been 20 BBís, or $4000. All that stack is good for is shoving on people.

Well now, you have a choice. If you want to be a shorty shove guy, you can sit at a normal table. If, however, you donít want any shorty shove guys in your game, you can sit at one of the tables marked DEEP and the minimum buy in there will be 50 BBís or $10,000. The max buy in remains the same, but I think the high limit online players are really going to appreciate this change as I heard overwhelmingly positive feedback on it. I think eventually it will trickle down to the smaller games as well.

Anyway, Iím going to get some sleep and look to win a boatload of chips tomorrow. Iím expecting t hit the 150,000 mark sometime tomorrow, but even if I have a break even day that will still put me in great shape for day three with 60,900 in chips.

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